Mary had Speedo circle the city three times so every Afterlight below would have a clear view of it. Speedo was clearly apprehensive.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Speedo asked her. He had asked this over and over again, as if asking might get her to change her mind. “There’s got to be a reason why the kids we sent out never came back.”

“We’ll discover the reason soon enough.”

On the second loop above the city, Mary decided where they’d set down. It was a city full of deadspots, thanks to the great Chicago fire—but one place stood out. Mary recognized it as the grounds of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition—a giant world’s fair. It was more than a mile across—the largest deadspot Mary had ever seen—and even from this height, Mary could see it was quite literally swarming with Afterlights.

“There,” said Mary, pointing at the largest square, in the center of the fairgrounds. “That’s where we’ll set down.”

Speedo quaked in his wet bathing suit. “But shouldn’t we land somewhere away from the city? Far, far away?”

“No, Speedo,” Mary said calmly. “This time, I want to be right in the thick of it.”

Their standard operating procedure had always been to settle in less populated areas, set up their various soul traps, then return sometime later to see if the traps had sprung. Then, as the population within the Hindenburg grew, she became slightly more daring, setting down in small towns and villages that might have some rudimentary organization to their Afterlight population.

She would address the small gatherings of Afterlights in these towns. Sometimes they would join her, and climb aboard, sometimes not. If they chose not to join her, she would leave them with whatever gifts she could spare, and the nagging feeling that they missed out on something wonderful. By the time she came to Chicago, she had ninety-three Afterlights in her protective care.

“The city’s run by a Death Boss!” said Speedo. “That’s what he calls himself! A Death Boss!”

“Just a rumor,” Mary said, although she suspected that the rumor was true. She had heard that he even named himself after the city’s most notorious gangster. “Last month you were telling me that Chicago didn’t even exist!”

“I didn’t say that,” said Speedo. “I said that it didn’t exist in Everlost.”

“And yet now we know that it does,” Mary pointed out. “Illumination defeats ignorance every time.”

“What if he captures us and turns us into slaves?” pleaded Speedo. “Then what?”

“Dictators who rule with an iron fist are motivated by self-interest,” Mary lectured, “and if Pugsy Capone does rule like a dictator, it would not serve his interests to enslave us.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Mary sighed. “No,” she admitted. “But we’re going anyway.”

They circled the city a final time, then descended toward the grounds of the Columbian Exhibition.

* * *